Archive for December, 2009
I’m going nuts
I think I am seriously going crazy. I don’t know if it was the late night, all the drunk people around me or if I am actually going crazy, but last night while working on night shift I had a full conversation with my tummy / T-rex while on each of my three breaks. Think of the way little kids talk to their imaginary friends and it was a little on par with that kind of weirdness.
Pregnant ladies are nuts and I only just realised I have joined them.
I used to talk to People With Children as if they had all been reading the same book: The Talking To People Without Kids book. They would tell me about kindergarten, injections, clothes and various forms of liquid waste. It was quaint and a bit boring.
Now I find myself paying special attention to them. Especially how they relate to their children. How they deal with different situations and what that seems to say about them and their offspring. Mostly I’m applying my understanding of the world to their situation. Which is totally unfair, but rather entertaining; in an It’s going to happen to you too, buddy! kind of way.
I know that my perspective is going to change as the day-to-day challenges morph from Help Emma to Help Emma and the baby to just Help!, as most of the parents I have talked to have delighted in telling me. However, what do they know?
They made their decisions and stuck with it – bully for them! – but are those decisions the right ones for us? It’s hard to tell. They seem to be taking rational and well thought out control of their lives. They seem to be doing a right thing (as opposed to THE right thing, which no-one will be particularly specific on) and that seems to be working out okay. I mean;
- their kids are alive (and that’s good, right?)
- their kids seem normal (but what’s normal?)
- their lives are fairly uncomplicated (Are the kids asleep? Okay, let’s take a break!)
- they are pretty happy (but a little sad at having lost their old sense of freedom)
- everything finishes at 7pm (The kids need to go to sleep)
So what’s the problem?
Everyone has an opinion. For each person who says, “Go Left!”, I can find someone who says, “Go Right!”. This isn’t advice, it’s propaganda!
I have a feeling that no matter what book/person/gypsy I consult the only person who has the answer is me.
And that makes me a responsible parent (to be).
Oh. I get it.
Image by marklarsen (Flickr).
Now that I have one of my own, I have started to notice them everywhere. Pregnant Ladies. Everywhere. I feel like I’m in a movie about an alien invasion force that secretly impregnated the human race. It’s eerie.
At least I know Emma is safe from the Overmind’s control. Or do I? …
It’s now ten weeks down and thirty to go and I have been noticing lately the expectations people have had already this early on, and my inability to live up to those expectations.
In the past, and to an extent now, I have always cared about what other people thought of me and their expectations of what I was doing and how I was going to achieve the things I wanted to achieve. I took my own wants and needs into consideration very little and always tried to live up to other expectations.
Ben has always tried to get me out of this habit, to stop thinking about everyone else once in a while and think about myself. I have always found this incredibly difficult, not only to apply but even to understand why I should try to change…until now.
Heading into week eleven I still have not suffered from morning sickness and have been told by my GP that if it hasn’t hit now then chances are good that I am one of the lucky 25% of women who simply don’t get morning sickness. 25%!!! That can’t be right? I had always thought and most people I have told that to have reiterated the idea that pregnancy and morning sickness were just two things that always went together. In fact some women who have had children and have heard that got quite upset and to a point, angry at me for not suffering the way they did.
I started to get a little upset by that. I felt like I was missing out, that I wasn’t getting the full pregnancy experience. That if I didn’t suffer for the baby then I wasn’t as good a mother as these women who had. Then that little part of my brain clicked in and went “Wait a minute! You want to be uncomfortable and vomiting not to satisfy your own wants and needs but to make these women feel better? How the hell does that work?”
Why was I always so content to live up to other people’s expectations instead of my own even if they made me feel uncomfortable? Why didn’t I stop for two seconds and think about what was actually good for me? Why was it always so hard for that little part of my brain to click in before and see the importance of looking after myself first?
I guess in a way it was difficult to see the difference between what I wanted and what other people wanted, but when someone wants you to throw up every morning and be uncomfortable just to make themselves feel better about you being pregnant it is time for the reality chip to start working and tell them to bugger off.
Image by welshwitch36 (Flickr).
We’re about to have our first cafe breakfast in a month (or more) and I’m all excited! It doesn’t feel like I have been missing out at all. Life hasn’t changed at all, but then again it has completely changed.
Just a funny moment when suddenly I can see the change but don’t feel like it’s a loss at all. I was expecting it to feel like I was losing something, another great reason to let go of my expectations!
